Support Services

In the summer of 2007, Clemson University faced a large-scale e-mail system implementation. Looking for innovative ways to maximize limited staff resources, IT support managers created the Situation Room. Using Adobe Connect, support managers linked in real time to support personnel in the field to provide expert advice and up-to-date information throughout the implementation. The experience was successful, and the Situation Room was used to manage fall semester start-up support issues. Now at any time during support hours, IT personnel can enter the virtual room to find out about support issue trends and systems status and to access subject experts.

For the past decade, campuses in the United States have been offering comprehensive communications services in campus dorms that include high speed Internet, cable television, and telephone services (local line, long distance, and voice mail in some cases). With students migrating to other forms of personal communications such as cell phones and text messaging, campuses are reevaluating the need for telephone lines in the dorms. This panel will discuss the implementations at both Notre Dame and Texas A&M University. Included in the discussion will be student opinion polls, wireless alternatives, and E911 and other safety considerations.

Since its inception, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) has remained the most widely recognized and adopted framework for IT service management. The many benefits of ITIL have become widely known and continue to grow as the community of practice matures. Most institutions using ITIL started with version 2 and are in the midst of their adoption process. Version 3 represents a significant change in the architecture of ITIL. ITIL version 3 aligns service management with evolving business environments, rapidly advancing technology, compliance requirements, and governance models, and it shifts ITIL from a process focus to a lifecycle focus. This research from the Burton Group discusses the notable shift in terms of how IT is viewed in the overall context of the institution.

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This presentation is a follow-up to last year's presentation on e-desktops and e-learning. It will review the technology and deployment of e-desktop 18 months later, highlighting original expectations, reality, and lessons learned in understanding how faculty and students adopt new technologies.

ITIL is a leading framework for managing and delivering IT services. It helps IT organizations become more efficient and effective in their service planning, delivery, and oversight. ITIL is flexible enough to be adopted by IT in higher education. This discussion will briefly introduce ITIL and its place in the wider IT value chain. It will also cover the experience of an ITIL implementation at Yale University, including the time, resources, and skills required.

Reconciling the technical aspects of IT with the basic information your campus community needs doesn't have to be a struggle. Knowing your audience, simplicity, and practice are the basis of a successful communication strategy. This presentation is designed to help IT professionals focus on and identify communication approaches for various audiences and strike a balance between technical details and "need to know" information. Using an interactive format and real-life examples, it will highlight the risks and rewards of IT storytelling.

Due to service demands, we often expect our ResNet and student staff to perform miracles. This panel discussion will explore and compare solutions from three different institutions to training, retaining, and providing growth opportunities for student workers while meeting or exceeding service-level expectations.

This ECAR case study complements the 2007 ECAR study by Mark C. Sheehan, Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Education, which examines the state of higher education help desk organizations, services, tools, resources, and management practices and how these and assorted other measures are related to desirable help desk outcomes. ECAR undertook this case study of New York University to demonstrate how the framework of IT service management practices and functions known as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) can strengthen service management practices in a complex higher education institution.

Citation for this work: Pirani, Judith A., Mark C. Sheehan, and Bob Albrecht. “ITIL at New York University: A Framework for Excellence” (Case Study 1). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Using established practices for good communication eliminates the missteps that hamper the effectiveness of IT messages to the campus community