DIY: Strategies for IncreasingUsage of Self-Help SupportResources
Christine Doherty, Stanford University
Ida Wellner, Stockholm University
Trisha Gordon, University of Virginia
July 2, 2008
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Discussion Topics
•What types/formats/styles of self-helpresources are the most effective inanswering users’ questions?
•How can support teams advertise theirself-help resources to users?
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About Stanford/CourseWork
•~ 900-1000 sites per quarter (Fall - Spring) --represents 1/3 of Stanford’s courses
•~ 12-15 thousand unique users per quarter
•Main support model
–Help ticket system used by entire university
–1-3 day response window, although most tickets areanswered within 24 hours
•Support team (current status)
–One full time user support staff (me)
–One designer
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Why is this Important?
•Limited support resources (small staff)
•Spike in help tickets at beginning of every quarter(200+ in first few weeks)
•Tickets mostly ask the same questions
•Answers are well documented in FAQ, Quick StartGuide, but users don’t reach them
•User feedback surveys confirm that most users donot use help documentation and do not think theyneed training
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Example: Where is my coursesite?
•In Winter 2008 quarter, 150 out of 260 help ticketsin first few weeks were from users trying to findcourse sites (mostly students)
•Reasons this question is so common
–Students don’t know that our system is opt-in andsometimes instructors don’t use it
–Delay between official enrollment in course and beingadded to course site
–Sakai tab management causes problems, since morerecent sites show often up in “more” drop-down
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Using MOTD
•Post answers to most common support issues usingMOTD tool on gateway page
•Rotate messages depending on relevance
–Finding course sites message at beginning of quarter
–Grades message near end of quarter
•Goals:
–Reduce support load
–Alleviate frustration for users, enable them to findanswers faster
–Use the opportunity to promote self-help resources likeQuick Start Guide
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Results
•In Spring 2008 quarter, only 39 help ticketsregarding course site access
•Anecdotal evidence that users are reading gatewaymessages (users refer to it in help tickets whenaccess problems continue)
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Using Links to Specific HelpContent
•Custom content (FAQ, Quick Start, Videos)placed into Drupal and served in Sakai Helptool, as well as gateway
•Built with persistent links to individual items(e.g., Adding Participants to a Site)
•We use these links on MOTD and in respondingto help tickets
•Goals:
–Make responses to help tickets morecomprehenseive and consistent
–Introduce and encourage use of self-helpresources
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Example Help Ticket
Typical help ticket from professor:
“I need to add my TA to my course site for STATS 210, but Ican’t find a way to do that. Please help.”
Response from support:
“Professor XYZ,
Please refer to our Quick Start Guide for instructions on addingparticipants to your site.
Best,
CourseWork Team”
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Types of Content
•Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate thatQuick Start Guides are the most useful to ourusers (based on user feedback)
•Quick Start Guides are broken down to shortsections on most commonly used tasks andinclude screen shots
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What types of content haveworked best for your institution?
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Ida Wellner’s Presentation
Stockholm University
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Background
•Stockholm University
–Faculty and staff 5 000
–Students 50 000
•Mondo is used in approx. ¼ of SU’s 1500courses
•Teachers create their own course sites
•Students and employees can create projectsites
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Training and support
•Introductory seminars for faculty and staff(optional)
•Students are introduced to Mondo by theirteachers (or not at all)
•1st line: IT services general helpdesk
•2nd line: ”Mondo/Sakai experts” (2-3 people)
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Support issues
•1:st line handle user name and passwordissues, ”Mondo account” (~60/month)
•2:nd line handle all other Mondo related issus(~30/month)
•Hundreds of sites and thousands of users withno training, still very few support requests
–We’re doing something wrong: everyone isfrustrated and confused but they don’t know how toget help
–We’re doing something right: the system is selfexplanatory and help docs really help people
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What we have done
•Gateway page:
–News, current events and info
–”Getting started” and Help links easy to spot
•Mondo User Forum – joinable site for user-to-user support and discussions
•Separate knowledge base vs Help Tool
Knowledge Base
Help Tool
All systems help docs in oneplace
Easy to edit documents
Searchable in Help Tool
English version almostcomplete out of the boxStatistics (Google)
Not searchable in Help Tool
Migrate/create manually
Not searchable from KB
Index structure limitations
Difficult to update
Language issues
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Help Tool – what we have done(1)
•Documents in Swedish and English
•General Mondo support documentation +built-in standard tool documentation
•Tutorials:
–Mondo for teachers (create a course site)
–Mondo for research groups (create a project site)
–Mondo for students (ready-to-use + editable)
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Help Tool – what we have done(2)
•Getting started
–The basics, Quick Start, User guides
•Logging in & user roles:
–Roles, Guest Login, Student view for teachers
•Sharing ideas & demo sites
–Demo sites, User forum, What tools should I use?
•Frequently asked questions
–FAQ, Known issues
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Ideas for the future
•Google Analytics for the Help Tool documents
•Subscribe all users to one site+ More efficient than joinable User Forum site?– Moderation and legal issues?
•Good Examples - Presentation of actual sites
•User guides for tricky tools (T&Q)
•Instructional movies