DIY: Strategies for Increasing Usage of Self-Help Support Resources Christine Doherty, Stanford University Ida Wellner, Stockholm University Trisha Gordon, University of Virginia July 2, 2008

2 Discussion Topics What types/formats/styles of self-help resources are the most effective in answering users’ questions? How can support teams advertise their self-help resources to users?

3 About Stanford/CourseWork ~ sites per quarter (Fall - Spring) -- represents 1/3 of Stanford’s courses ~ thousand unique users per quarter Main support model –Help ticket system used by entire university –1-3 day response window, although most tickets are answered within 24 hours Support team (current status) –One full time user support staff (me) –One designer

4 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 Start Guide, but users don’t reach them User feedback surveys confirm that most users do not use help documentation and do not think they need training

5 Example: Where is my course site? In Winter 2008 quarter, 150 out of 260 help tickets in first few weeks were from users trying to find course sites (mostly students) Reasons this question is so common –Students don’t know that our system is opt-in and sometimes instructors don’t use it –Delay between official enrollment in course and being added to course site –Sakai tab management causes problems, since more recent sites show often up in “more” drop-down

6 Using MOTD Post answers to most common support issues using MOTD 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 find answers faster –Use the opportunity to promote self-help resources like Quick Start Guide

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10 Results In Spring 2008 quarter, only 39 help tickets regarding course site access Anecdotal evidence that users are reading gateway messages (users refer to it in help tickets when access problems continue)

11 Using Links to Specific Help Content Custom content (FAQ, Quick Start, Videos) placed into Drupal and served in Sakai Help tool, 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 responding to help tickets Goals: –Make responses to help tickets more comprehenseive and consistent –Introduce and encourage use of self-help resources

12 Example Help Ticket Typical help ticket from professor: “I need to add my TA to my course site for STATS 210, but I can’t find a way to do that. Please help.” Response from support: “Professor XYZ, Please refer to our Quick Start Guide for instructions on adding participants to your site. Best, CourseWork Team ”

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15 Types of Content Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that Quick Start Guides are the most useful to our users (based on user feedback) Quick Start Guides are broken down to short sections on most commonly used tasks and include screen shots

16 What types of content have worked best for your institution?

17 Ida Wellner’s Presentation Stockholm University

18 Background Stockholm University –Faculty and staff –Students Mondo is used in approx. ¼ of SU’s 1500 courses Teachers create their own course sites Students and employees can create project sites

19 Training and support Introductory seminars for faculty and staff (optional) Students are introduced to Mondo by their teachers (or not at all) 1st line: IT services general helpdesk 2nd line: ”Mondo/Sakai experts” (2-3 people)

20 Support issues 1:st line handle user name and password issues, ”Mondo account” ( ~ 60/month) 2:nd line handle all other Mondo related issus ( ~ 30/month) Hundreds of sites and thousands of users with no training, still very few support requests –We’re doing something wrong: everyone is frustrated and confused but they don’t know how to get help –We’re doing something right: the system is self explanatory and help docs really help people

21 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 BaseHelp Tool All systems help docs in one place Easy to edit documents Searchable in Help Tool English version almost complete out of the box Statistics (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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23 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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25 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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27 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