EDUCAUSE | Support Services and Presented at EDUCAUSE Annual Conferences

Challenges and Strategies for Computer Maintenance Services

drupal — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:06:09 -0600

An effective and efficient computer and peripherals maintenance service is a big challenge for the IT staff in a campus with more than 50,000 items. This poster will present the results achieved with strategic planning related to the service desk, proactive and reactive maintenance, and components repository management.

Maximize Enterprise Productivity by Implementing a TCO Methodology

drupal — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:58:56 -0600

Slumping workplace productivity can be intrinsically tied to technological regression. Empirical evidence illustrates that procedurally managing hardware life cycles is strategically superior to a system of ad hoc replacements. While tangible benefits like cost savings are transparent, intangibles like industry reputation and risk mitigation are perhaps the greatest advantages.

Rightsizing Your Request Tracking System

drupal — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:18:28 -0600

Stanford University and Bowdoin College recently made major improvements to their request tracking systems. Both used the same basic criterion for their selections, but ended up with very different products from two vendors. Learn how institution size, campus fit, supportability, and expense factor into such major decisions.

Using Instructional Design to Shape Technology Training

drupal — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:57:11 -0600

Technology training for faculty and staff is more effective when it is based on instructional design principles. This presentation will show how three principles were used to guide training efforts and achieve positive results during a course management system change at Samford University.

Are You Ready? A Systematic Approach to Training New Help Desk Staff

drupal — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 07:30:00 -0600

The Simmons Help Desk mentors and trains new students and regular staff through a comprehensive online and hands-on training program. Topics cover technical baselines and also Simmons-specific policies and procedures. Staff are assessed through observation, quizzes, and metrics. As a result, technicians provide consistent, high-quality service.

Information Technology Process Improvement in Higher Education

drupal — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:55:41 -0500

Cornell Information Technologies has launched an initiative to mature the technology-driven organization to one that is both process-oriented and service-oriented. Significant improvements in several process areas have resulted from referencing the ITIL framework as a guide and leveraging and optimizing existing business knowledge.

User Services Lightning Round

drupal — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 00:42:03 -0500

Learn a lot fast! This series of five-minute presentations will provide overviews of interesting, innovative, and timely work in user services. Each session will also be shared as a poster later today, giving you a chance to explore the topic more deeply and speak with the presenters.

24 x 7 x 365 Anywhere in the World: Creating an Executive IT Support Unit
Momi Ford, Executive IT Support Manager, Indiana University
When executives have IT needs, the highest level of support available anytime, anywhere keeps them productive. See how Indiana Universitys Executive IT Support unit makes this possible.

Emergency Texts: A Reality Check
John C. Borne, University Information Systems, Louisiana State University
LSU will report on a test of its emergency text-messaging system. This session will examine the strengths and weaknesses of text messaging in an emergency notification package and managing community expectations.

Infusing Academic Support into the Online Environment: A Pilot Program
Craig Lamb, Empire State College SUNY
Empire State Colleges Center for Distance Learning recently launched the Academic Assistance Tutorial System, an online instructor-initiated early warning system. This session will describe its past and planned development and self-paced learning modules.

Lessons from Running a Mega Lab: A Student Outreach Program to Embrace Collaboration and Learning
Sheri Stahler, Temple University
Running a 24 x 7 computer lab and help desk with 700 seats and 6,000 visitors daily meant looking at operations on a megascale. Computer Services adapted to run the TECH Center efficiently.

Maximize Enterprise Productivity by Implementing a Total Cost of Ownership Methodology
Ronan Glynn, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Empirical evidence illustrates that procedurally managing hardware life cycles is strategically superior to a system of ad hoc replacements. Intangibles like industry reputation and risk mitigation are perhaps the greatest advantages.

Using Instructional Design to Shape Technology Training
Lisa McNeal, Samford University
Technology training for faculty and staff is more effective when based on instructional design principles. This presentation will show how three principles guided training to achieve positive results at Samford University.

Who Will Be the Next Rock Star?
Kimberly Brookes, Simmons College
To educate students on the academic and personal consequences of downloading and sharing files illegally, Technology at Simmons sponsors Simmons Rockstar, which combines education on copyright with a karaoke contest.

A Collaborative, Enterprise Approach to Efficient and Cost-Effective Desktop Management

drupal — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:42:06 -0500

As a result of a 2005 desktop security incident, 25 IT support directors from across Purdue University entered into a collaborative project, SMARTcomputing, to define an enterprise approach to desktop computer support and security. This presentation will describe the project's consensus-building strategies, overall goals, and outcomes.

Will the Last One to Leave Turn Out the Lights?

drupal — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:26:18 -0500

Does IT matter? Nicholas Carr sent shockwaves through the IT community by claiming IT is a commodity that rarely provides a distinct competitive advantage. Is this true? Now Carr argues that computing is becoming a utility with massive information-processing plants pumping data and software code into our businesses. Will our in-house computing facilities become plug-in utilities? Will tomorrow's IT leader be a utility operator, a facility manager, or a strategic contributor to the institution?

CRM Adventures: Three Perspectives

drupal — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:03:39 -0500

Constituent and customer relationship management solutions are starting to make inroads in higher education. This panel discussion will bring together representatives from Rio Salado College, Ohio State University, and Lehigh University to talk about their CRM projects and share the benefits and pitfalls they have experienced with other organizations considering adopting a CRM solution.

Integrating Incident and Problem Management with ITIL Methodologies

drupal — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:18:50 -0600

Yale University is implementing two ITIL processes: incident and problem management. This presentation will discuss our incident and problem management design projects, including the maturation of the help desk to an ITIL service desk, the benefits of clearly distinguishing incidents and problems, and measuring process effectiveness.

ITIL: An Effective Methodology for Managing IT Services

drupal — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:16:36 -0600

ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, is a process-based framework for more effectively managing IT services. Although just emergent in higher education, it has been widely adopted in industry. It is surprisingly well-suited to higher education. This session will introduce ITIL and serves as a companion to another session describing Yale's experience implementing ITIL.

Distributed Technology Support

drupal — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:17:45 -0600

This session will explore distributed technology support from a results-oriented perspective. The discussion will take into consideration both central and distributed issues, as well as institutional and local issues, with the goal of identifying best practices for a varying number of distributed structures.

GROK: A Virtual World of Help

drupal — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 09:49:41 -0600

Far from being strangers to the power of search engines and knowledge bases, members of the academy increasingly demand sophistication, depth, breadth, and efficiency in retrieving localized technical support. In response, LSU developed GROK, a knowledge base with a mobile device interface, multimedia features, and a collaborative authoring environment.

No Train, No Gain: Retooling Customer Service Staff into IT Support Professionals

drupal — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:04:27 -0600

Even the most seasoned IT professional needs constant training. How do you instill the love of lifelong learning in nontechnical support staff, at the same time moving them along the continuum toward more confidence and skill in technology support and troubleshooting? Empower them to learn, then teach them to teach other.

Project Prioritization Score Sheet: Aligning IT Activities with Client Priorities

drupal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:04:19 -0600

Zane State College has implemented a project prioritization model for aligning limited IT resources and funding with institutional goals and objectives and client priorities. This presentation will describe the process and the project prioritization score sheet used to determine priority based on a holistic assessment of standard, client-focused impact criteria.

The IT Help Desk in Higher Education: Results of the 2007 ECAR Survey

drupal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:04:17 -0600

This session presents findings from the 2007 ECAR survey on IT help desk management in the U.S. and Canada. Using assessment methods derived from IT service management standards and the broader IT help desk literature, ECAR has developed a robust view of the state of the practice in this highly significant service area.

Improving Service Management for Effective IT Governance

drupal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:04:16 -0600

The University of Sao Paolo structured a set of mechanisms for effective IT governance. This poster will present the strategies and outcomes of our initiatives to manage our complex IT infrastructure and to address the growing needs for quality IT services.

Strategic Planning as Driver for IT Services Governance

drupal — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:56:48 -0500

To achieve the USP computing Center's main goal of operational excellence in IT services provision, a strategic plan involving the entire organization was developed. This presentation will demonstrate how this strategic plan was used to drive IT services governance and enforce the operational excellence search.

Research Mission Support

drupal — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:56:43 -0500

This meeting will provide a forum for discussing IT support for institutional research missions. The two broad categories of concern include support for research administration and IT support for research activities. Research administration support involves pre- and post-award support, interaction with federal grant systems, regulatory compliance, and intellectual property management. Supporting research activities includes centralized versus decentralized approaches, high-performance computing, advanced networking, and informatics, as well as enabling multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and interinstitutional work.

Relationship Management: Stronger Partnerships to Inform IT Planning

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:38 -0500

Relationship management is a holistic approach to understanding customer IT needs that augments existing relationships between customers and IT service teams. The goals are to position central IT to understand customer priorities and to inform operational and strategic planning. This panel discussion will offer three institutions' approaches and the successes and challenges they face.

In Plain English, Please: Effective IT Communications

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:36 -0500

The University at Albany and Davidson College will discuss the strategies they use to convey information about IT services to their respective user communities. Both institutions have developed a protocol for communicating about IT to non-technical audiences in user-friendly ways.

Implementing IT Shared Services in a Research-Led University Without Limiting Innovation

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:51 -0500

Evidence indicates that implementing IT shared services across an organization can significantly improve cost effectiveness and minimize risk. But in an organization such as a research-led university, which values both research and innovation, there can be fierce resistance to such an initiative. This presentation will describe how a leading research university is implementing IT shared services.

Fiscal Gain Without Political Pain: Keeping a Personalized Face on Support Centralization

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:50 -0500

Oregon State University and the University of Washington have taken fresh approaches to providing centralized desktop support. Presenters will share their approaches in implementing cost-recovery models for desktop support, including challenges and implementation strategies that have resulted in effective, immediate economies of scale.

Supporting Creativity . . . and Living to Tell About It

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:50 -0500

Scholars with creative ideas for uses of IT are generally given little more than access to conventional Web space and MySQL/PHP servers. This presentation will show how the standard for support of interactive Web sites with unique functionality was raised substantially at the University of Michigan through development of UM.SiteMaker.

ITIL in the Real World: NYU Leverages ITIL Best Practices to Enhance IT Organizational Processes

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:49 -0500

Underdefined IT processes may compromise product development, service delivery, organizational agility, and efficiency. Without well-developed IT processes, service partners may find it difficult to prioritize, plan, manage, and deliver services effectively. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) offers a broad-reaching and sophisticated framework for best practices for technology organizations.

Using Sound Bites to Support IT

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:49 -0500

Many administrators and faculty consider information technology a magical mystery place where dollars disappear and our only visible utility is when something's broken. To alter this image, Northeastern University's Information Services department developed a public relations campaign to show our value. We will share the plan--which is working.

Self-Help Clinics: A Pragmatic Approach to Student Support

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:48 -0500

The Self-Help Clinic is a way to educate and enable Simmons students in the management of their own technology. Attendees sign a release acknowledging that help desk staff will provide guidance, but that they are responsible for their own computers and for the work done during the clinic.

Milking the Model: Getting the Most Out of Integration and Centralization